Climbers Get Boulder Bug

Richard Ruhland has had his share of problems and highballs.

Most business people are familiar with those words. But for Ruhland, and a whole subculture of Americans, they have a different meaning.

In the language of rock climbing, a “problem” is a route in bouldering, and a “highball” is a climbing route that could result in serious injury if a climber falls. (Bouldering means climbing short distances without a rope.)

During the past 20 years, rock climbing has evolved from a pastime for double-dog daredevils to a mainstream sport in Arkansas.

“It really has become a respectable sport,” said Ruhland, who owns La Casa Pollo, a climbing gym near Fayetteville that he claims is one of the best in the Midwest. “So it isn’t just a freak pastime for rebels.”

The sport has become so popular in Northwest Arkansas that several area schools now have climbing walls, including the University of Arkansas (with two in the HPER building), Rogers High School, Birch Kirksey Middle School in Rogers and Leverett Elementary in Fayetteville. That’s in addition to climbing walls in three area retail stores: the Pack Rat Outdoor Center in Fayetteville and Lewis & Clark Outfitters in both Springdale and Rogers.

“I know several people who have climbing walls in their homes,” said Rick Spicer, climbing manager at the Pack Rat.

“Climbers are what drove our business for a long time,” said Scott Crook, who opened the Pack Rat in 1975 to equip hard-core mountaineering enthusiasts. Most of the store’s sales are now from clothing, although much of that apparel is climbing inspired. Crook said actual climbing gear will account for about $85,000 of the Pack Rat’s sales this year, which is about 5 percent of total sales of $1.7 million.

The $45,000 Entre Prises climbing wall Crook installed in 2000 gets people into the store to climb (for free) but doesn’t really pay for itself.

“People come in and climb the wall, and hopefully they’ll buy something,” Crook said. Half of the Pack Rat’s climbing wall is rock. The flip side is synthetic ice (polyethylene foam).

“For fitness, it’s a fun way to get some exercise,” Rob Potts, co-owner of the two Lewis & Clark stores, said of their climbing walls, which are 28 feet tall in Rogers and 33 feet in Springdale. “It’s an alternative to going to the gym and lifting weights.”

Potts said climbing gear amounts to only about 1 percent of sales at the Lewis & Clark stores, where the primary demographic is age 30 to 50 with kids. The kids, however, enjoy the climbing wall free of charge while the adults shop.

With 90-foot bluffs, Arkansas has good outdoor climbing spots, but they don’t demand multi-day assents like some mountains out West, Crook said.

“The world is waking up to the fact that we have some really good climbing here,” he said.

A story about Arkansas mountain climbing was featured in the October issue of Rock and Ice, a national climbing magazine.

La Casa Pollo

Over the past decade, Ruhland has had 13,000 “clients” at his climbing gym, which was built in 1995 on the foundation of what was once a chicken house near Lake Sequoyah, eight miles (“only 12 minutes”) east of Fayetteville. He has 200 “base core” clients at any one time. They are all officially members of La Casa Pollo’s 200+ Club.

La Casa Pollo has a 74-foot-tall outdoor climbing wall and a 35-foot indoor wall in addition to smaller routes that can be scaled throughout the building. That amounts to 11,000-SF of climbing space (walls and ceilings) — 8,000 SF inside and 6,000 SF outside. La Casa Pollo also has a total of 13,000 handles, or places where a climber can get a grip on the wall or ceiling. It’s also the most rustic climbing gym in the area with no air conditioning or indoor plumbing (but there is a Porta-Potty). The floors of the gym are carpeted with foam rubber and mattresses in case climbers lose their grip.

Ruhland said his gym helps climbers train before they attempt some of the area’s outdoor climbing challenges, which are becoming more popular with serious climbers across the country.

“It’s a practical training place,” he said. “About 90 percent of our regular clientele use it for just that, hard-core technical training.”

Ruhland admits climbing mountains can still be dangerous. When he started climbing in the 1980s, there was about one fatality a year related to mountain climbing in Northwest Arkansas. But because of increased safety measures, a climber hasn’t died in the area since Blake Croxdale of Fayetteville fell at Busby Hollow near Jasper in 1997.

Ruhland, who owns a home-repair business called Ruhland Repair, said he’s thinking about retiring from his day job so he can devote more time to the climbing gym.

La Casa Pollo attracts the young, hip and healthy, but Ruhland is quick to note that all his clients aren’t young. Ruhland is 61, and he has had climbers in his gym as old as 83. Climbers don’t have to be svelte, either. Men weighing 450 pounds have scaled the walls at La Casa Pollo, as well as women tipping the scale at 350, he said.

Ruhland said La Casa Pollo attracts everyone from ninja solo climbers to the occasional Wal-Mart vendor.

“I saw it on the Internet,” Christian Borgmann said during a recent visit to La Casa Pollo.

Borgmann had moved to Fayetteville only two weeks earlier from Dortmund, Germany, and was looking for a place to practice his rock climbing skills. Moments later, he was hanging from the ceiling of La Casa Pollo like Spiderman from a skyscraper.

For Ruhland, climbing is physical therapy. He suffered a broken back when a boiler on a Navy ship exploded in 1966.

“I hurt when I’m not climbing,” Ruhland said.

As a result, Ruhland became one of the area’s pioneers of rock climbing. He won first-place overall in the Midwest Pumpfest climbing competition in 1999. Both Ruhland and Scott Fitzgerald, an employee of La Casa Pollo, have scaled the 867-foot-tall Devil’s Tower in Wyoming.

“I actually competed until a year ago April,” Ruhland said.

For a serious climb, Ruhland will pack 28-pounds of gear worth about $2,000.

Admission to climb at La Casa Pollo is $7 per day. Equipment rental (shoes and belt) costs $4. A $5 safety course is required for anyone involved in rope management, either climbing or belaying (the technique of holding the rope to arrest a falling climber). For frequent climbers, La Casa Pollo has a $35 monthly fee instead of $7 per day, and climbers get a free month with a six-month contract.

Cliffhanger

Robert Ginsburg, who owns Uncle Sam’s Safari Outfitters in Fayetteville, said there were “very few” climbers in the area when he opened his store in 1982.

At that time, he sold about $200 worth of climbing equipment a year. Now, climbing gear amounts to about 20 percent of his sales, although he won’t reveal the dollar figure.

Uncle Sam’s doesn’t have a climbing wall, but the store has one of the area’s “most extensive selections of climbing gear,” Ginsburg said.

“In the last 20 years, climbing as a sport in Arkansas and the United States has become much more mainstream because of media exposure and people’s desire to push their limits through more extreme sports.”

Ginsburg said the 1993 movie “Cliffhanger,” starring Sylvester Stallone, helped boost the popularity of mountain climbing.

Ginsburg said the fact that climbing is dangerous is “the edge people are looking for.”

Climbing routes have been established at Yosemite National Park in California on mountains that were previously considered unclimbable.

“The boundaries continue to be expanded in terms of what climbers have accomplished,” Ginsburg said.

“It’s a good workout,” said Josh Eldridge, who works at Lewis & Clark in Rogers. “I think there’s the adrenalin crowd and your weekend workout crowd. It’s about the sense of accomplishment.”

“You can learn a lot about yourself when you’re climbing,” Spicer said. “You can really teach yourself what you’re capable of mentally and physically.”

Types of Rock Climbing

Before you go climbing, contact a school, store or gym that has a climbing expert on staff. Classes on climbing and rope safety are offered at La Casa Pollo and the Pack Rat Outdoor Center in Fayetteville. Also, never climb alone. Preferably, climb with someone who has experience in the sport. Any type of climbing involving a rope requires a second person on the ground to monitor, or “belay,” the rope. In all types of climbing, it’s a good idea to wear a helmet.

• Top roping: A climbing rope is tied to a stable fixture at the top of a cliff (such as a boulder or tree). The rope hangs to the ground. The climber, who is attached to the rope via a belt or harness, uses the rope as a guide for climbing and for safety in case of a fall.

• Sport climbing: Climbing using bolts that are pre-attached to the rock. In sport climbing, the climber carries a rope and attaches it to bolts along the way. If the climber falls, the rope should catch him.

• Traditional climbing: Climbing using “protection,” such as cams and aluminum “nuts,” that allow the climber to get a grip on crevices in the rock instead of using pre-attached bolts. The climber carries a rope as in sport climbing and attaches it along the way in case of a fall.

• Aid climbing: An extremely technical activity using gear to ascend a rock face. In aid climbing, the climber often hammers a piton, or iron spike, into the rock as he goes along. He can use the piton to climb and to anchor the rope.

• Free climbing: Climbing using your hands and feet to ascend natural rock features with or without the use of a rope. Free climbers only use a rope in case of a fall, not to aid their progress in climbing.

• Free solo climbing: Free climbing without a rope or any other kind of gear.

• Bouldering: Climbing short distances (usually no more than 15 feet) without the aid of a rope but usually with assistants who spot the climber and put a “crash pad” (mattress or foam) underneath the climber in case of a fall.